Telephone calls from one user device to another may require transcoding if the user devices are unable to negotiate a common media encoding format (codec). Thus, a network will need to know which codecs the originating device and the terminating device support. The network may identify the codecs supported by the originating device by examining the “offer” portion of the call request message sent by the originating device when the call is placed. Currently, the network determines the codecs supported by the terminating device through a trial-and-error process, where the network may attempt to establish a call to the terminating device using the codecs offered by the originating device and, if that fails, the network may re-attempt to establish the call using other codecs. If the terminating device accepts this modified offer, the network provides transcoding services so that the media is translated “on the fly” for the duration of the session, between the format used by the originating device and that used by the terminating device.